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Questions for dads to ask young men who are interested in their daughter
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This was posted on Todd Friel’s Wretched Facebook page and is entitled:
Not Rude Questions for a Young Man by Robert Bowen and Todd Friel
We are not barbarians. Dads should not threaten a potential suitor with a fire-arm. At least not a loaded fire-arm. But that doesn’t mean a Dad shouldn’t put the young man on the hot seat.
Below are some questions that may help you determine if a young man will have access to your daughter. Your mileage may vary. Start with #30.
- Share your salvation testimony.
- What is the Gospel.
- Share the most recent Bible verse you have memorized.
- Can you recite all 66 books of the Bible in order? Try.
- How often do you read your Bible?
- When was the last time you read your Bible?
- Tell me about your participation in your local church.
- Can you recite the Nicene Creed for me?
- If you are a virgin, why? If you are not a virgin, tell me what you have learned.
- Tell me everything you know about the Protestant Reformation.
- What is your approach to protect your sexual purity as well as my child’s?
- What Scripture verses guide your interactions with the opposite sex?
Please see the rest of the questions here.
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What do you think? Are these the most important questions to ask? Do you think these questions are appropriate? Are there any questions they left out?
Spiritual Sounding Board 
“Lydia, I agree with you. I doubt that a persons value is ever brought into the discussion in sex ed and incest and rape are debilitating. Once your value has been diminished, you don’t believe you deserve any better”
For some reason this has become a big deal to me. I think it is because of my time as a board member for a spouse abuse/rape crisis center. I had NO idea at the time I took that on how widespread this evil really is. So many women feeling “devalued” so we have to rethink that as a society. And we have made some good strides in that area but not so much in church circles.
We have to find ways to communicate that “an evil criminal” tried to devalue them and devalued themselves in the process. We have to get away from the “purity” culture of you must be a virgin to have worth. (Our society has a hard time admitting someone is “evil” who does evil things. The church is the worst at it)
Here is why. Do you know what happens to many teen girls who are raped? They become promiscuous. Seems strange, does it not? That they would actually seek out what was done to them in violence? But in reality, without certain supports in place they see themselves as having no value at all so they sex as a way to get something….whether it be attention, validation or whatever. They decide to “use” it. They see themselves as “damaged goods” so why not?
This really changed my thinking about all the purity culture stuff. We must start with value and call feel free to call the criminal: Evil
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Do you know what happens to many teen girls who are raped? They become promiscuous. Seems strange, does it not?
Lydia, This doesn’t seem strange to me at all. It could be for attention or validation, but also think in their now warped minds they are looking for love and have no understanding of what that really looks like. There was a time when I thought this happened in everyone’s family. I got married very young and took everything he dished out because “he loved me” and that was what love was.
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I appreciated BTDT’s comment about her husband never advancing past arithmetic and then getting into huge spending and debt problems. Being an avid reader of old literature and history, I remember it striking me how many people who knew their “Trivium” (grammar, dialectic/logic, rhetoric) suffered because they did not know the other four liberal arts, the “Quadrivium” (four roads) of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. This includes about half the Founding Fathers, especially those from south of the Mason-Dixon line. The pressure to keep up appearances without the ability to create a budget is deadly.
Hence, for suitors of my daughters, a bit more questions (see WAY above) about career to figure out how he thinks.
And regarding the (very sad) discussion of promiscuity and rape (and other things), agreed that those who have been violated do seem to be more likely to fall into sexual sin. And agreed that if the best that “purity culture” can come up with is that “you’re virgin or you’re dirt”, it’s not surprising.
And I’ll agree that at times, the idea that this is the best “purity culture” can come up with does seem tenable. I remember hearing one gentleman speak rapturously of the breaking of the hymen by a virgin groom at Promise Keepers in 1995–LA Coliseum–and wonder to this day whether the man knew he was in LA, and that his scenario was far less likely than for a man to be dealing with the effects of his fornication.
Hope I’m wrong, but I remember.
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